I’ll stick to online shopping...

“What was I thinking?” was the only thing going through my mind on Saturday morning as my mom and I loaded into the car and drove toward Frankenmuth.

Yes, I went to Bronner’s, and I survived, barely…

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “Why the heck would you attempt to even navigate your way through that?!”

Personally, I try to stay away from Bronner’s when it hits December, but for some reason my mom and I decided to go.

Whatever the reason, I was second- guessing myself before we were even out of the driveway. I think I even said I’d be fine if we went to Midland instead.

As we were pulling into Bronner’s, I kept telling my mom, “If you want, we can go somewhere else,” and in response, I would get, “We drove all the way down here, we are going in.”

Of course, when we went into the store we were greeted by a brick wall of people lined up with their kids to see Santa.

As we headed in, I looked at my mom and made sure she had her phone with her in case we got split up…

Yeah right, like that would help.

Since we knew exactly what we needed anyways, there was no time to dawdle looking at unnecessary things.

We executed the plan flawlessly. We stayed together for about the first half hour, then since we were getting some ornaments personalized, I decided while she went to find her lights, I would get in line.

It’s a good thing I did, too. As soon as we met up again, I was done getting everything personalized and the line was getting long again.

Finally we decided to check out, and glancing at my phone, I realized we made pretty good timing for having to dodge through people.

We were in and out in a little over an hour.

I think it’s a new record!

But of course, the day wasn’t over just yet… No, it was just the beginning to probably one of the longest days of my life.

On the way home we decided to stop in Saginaw to shop for some other things.

The icing on the cake.

I thought Bronner’s was bad, but when we arrived in Saginaw, the mall was packed; heck, the whole city was packed!

I guess I never realized until now how rude some people are when they are shopping.

It’s like they don’t care that you are a person and you have feelings. They will run into you, hit you with things and step on you.

I lost track of how many times I dodged someone because they weren’t watching where they were going and I didn’t want to be the one to get hit.

It was that bad.

I understand Christmas is two weeks away, but where’s everyone’s holiday cheer?

All I saw was dirty looks and mean stares.

I returned the looks with a friendly smile, of course.

But I digress.

Although I did get the rest of my shopping accomplished, let’s just say this whole weekend reminded me why I do most of my Christmas shopping online.